Battle of the Wi-Fi Cards: Eye-Fi and Transcend SDHC cards reviewed

When capturing a high volume of images on a photo shoot, being able to wirelessly connect your camera to a smartphone, computer or to 'the cloud' has a lot of appeal. Wi-Fi can expedite workflow by allowing you to transfer image files remotely while on location and also negate the need for card readers or cables. It's easy to forget that your camera doesn't have to have Wi-Fi built-in to benefit from the advantages of connectivity. Wi-Fi capable SD memory cards have been around for a number of years, and they remain popular. In this article, we pit Eye-Fi's 16GB Pro X2 Wi-Fi SDHC card against the cheaper, higher-capacity Transcend 32GB Wi-Fi card and see which comes out on top.

actually the size of an eye fi card doesnt matter because of the endless memory feature, the card can be set delete photos and videos that have been safely uploaded from the card once the card gets down to a certain percentage of free space, the free space percentage can be set to whatever u want and the rest is automatic, just shoot and dont worry about the amount of space left on the card, the only reason u would need a lot of space is if ur recording 5 hour long videos, which i doubt anyone would do

I'd have loved to have kept my Transcend card, but it didn't work well AT ALL in a Canon SL1.

It worked well a Sony HX300 I was trying but when I went with a Canon SL1 the wireless range dropped off the table. I'd have to have the camera no more than 5 feet MAX from my router(I set it to use internet mode on the Transcend card) AND have clear line of site. Otherwise, nothing would transfer fully.

I dunno why the wireless range is so bad in the SL1 vs the HX300(didn't have an issue using it with the HX300), but it was and I had to send it back.

I want to try the Eye-fi card, but my biggest hangup with them is not being able to send a photo either multiple times or to multiple locations. From what I hear, you can only send a file ONCE and that's it. Once it's sent somewhere, you can no longer send that file anywhere else. To me that is just ridiculous.

EZ Share looks interesting but I'm not sure you can connect to a router with it.

I have both of these WiFI cards and have used them in various cameras but mostly in my Olympus OMD E-M5 and my Canon 7D (with CF adapter). I also use the ShutterSnitch app. I only use the native apps if I absolutely have to. Both of them are terrible.

After months of use, I find, for my needs, the Transcend works much better. It takes a little more time to set up and the firmware upgrade has made it much more stable but it transfers faster and works better with ShutterSnitch on my iPhone & iPad. The Transcend is also double the memory capacity so hooray!

Don't get me wrong, the EyeFi card works well and is very nice. It's very plug & play if you don't want to spend time in settings. Their app is also easy to use, better than the Transcend app, no where near as good as ShutterSnitch.

It really depends on your needs. I think more serious photographers should look towards the Transcend card.

I have just purchased the 16GB+Wi-Fi Eye-Fi Card and I have found it the most frustrating exercise in trying to get it to work. All I want to do is take photos, delete the ones which are rejects by me, and upload the remainder to my MacBook. Even if I delete photos from the card, Eye-Fi still uploads them to the Mac. Eye-Fi support, despite my detailed requirement to them, fail to understand what I am trying to achieve. It is very, very frustrating and I am sad to say that the card is destined for the bin. I might as well just take the SD Card out of the Canon and put it in the card slot on the Mac. I have several Canon cameras and try to keep most things Simple! Nil Points for Eye-Fi.

One feature of the Eye Fi is thier website. They list by camera brand and model what cards do what functions. For exabple for a cheap Cannon the Eye Fi mobi cards keep the camera on even in power save mode during wifi operations, allow menu control of wifi card, and display wifi status. Try to get compatibility out of any other SDHC wifi card before buy and try.

I purchased the 16GB card and it worked ok, from the Android app I know the v1.8 firmware has been released and I decided to update it.

I download and extract the firmware files to the root of the SD and update in my Pentax K5, I power on the camera and wait 5min. but nothing happened, I then power cycle the camera and I got 'memory card error'.

Then I try the windows update tool but I got stuck at stage 4 nothing happened after 5min., then I remember there is a card reader came with the card, just like the Eyefi card this card takes higher current than a standard SD slot can provide, and I successfully updated the card with the card reader, but still got memory card error on my camera, even worse my camera locked up, I must remove the battery to reset the camera.

Now I got a half dead card, it didn't work on my camera but still works as a normal SD on the computer.

I used few different made of wifi SD, Eyefi and some cheapo, Eyefi has the strongest signal no doubt. I can leave my tablet in the control room of a concert hall and go down shooting at the stage, all my pics got transferred to the tablet no problem, but I dun like the card for 2 reasons.

1. I am using a 3G tablet, for unknown reason all my pics not only transferred to the tablet but also uploaded to the web, I did not program the card to do this, I checked the forum and find that I am not alone on this.

2. The UI design of the app is not user friendly and confusing, being a non native English speaker I am able to manage most other apps but not this one, is it French design ? Now I stick with my Toshiba, and would like to see how the Transcend instant preview works.

The reason Eyefi supplies it's own card reader is that, the card requires higher than normal current to work, a standard reader can not read the card, this explained why the card has so strong wifi signal !

I think the browse feature of the transend card is a great advantage relative to the eye-fi card which lacks such a feature.Assume I have been shooting the whole day and I want to view some images on a bigger, brighter srceen or want to upload them or send them by email. With the eye-fi this is just impossible as I have to wait for all of my files to be transferred to my device. I'm shooting raw, so this is just not an option. I would have to wait for hours and I would probably run out of space and or battery on my phone or tablet. With the eye-fi one does have to option of selective upload, but that means that I have to go through the painstaking process of browsing all my photos on the camera and flagging the ones that I want to upload on my device.Auto-upload could be interesting, but why would i want to upload every one of my photos on my tablet or smartphone?Moreover,the wifi upload speed is just not fast enough to keep up with the shooting speed of say a typical portrait shoot.

I bought the eye-fi only a week ago and for me it's plain useless. When I'm next to my computer, I just plug the card into the card reader, I don't waste time waiting for my files to transfer through slow and unreliable wifi.

No: "It's also worth noting that the Eye-Fi card can be set to selectively transfer files. When this is set, the card will not automatically transfer a single file until it is marked with the "Protect" key icon in Playback on the camera. Any protected file will then begin transferring to the designated device."

I've tried the EyeFi X2 pro Class 6 on at Nikon D7000.I set up the Nikon to save *lowest* quality JPGs on the eye-fi slot.I dunno about the class 10 but it takes 20-30 seconds to transfer the JPGs to my mac.

Wasn't good enough for me, unless Nikon introduces a way to save low-quality lowest rez JPGs while the RAWs are full rez.

I notice the caption 'Note geotagging capability' under the 'Eye-Fi Card settings' screen shot. With no further comment.

Does this work well? In fact, how does it work? I'd like to think that if I sent photos (JPEG) directly to my GPS enabled computer that the software would be able to add the data to the JPEG's metadata.

I discovered the hard way that the Eye-Fi Pro card won't work in my Canon 60D when using Magic Lantern software. The camera locks up and has to be re-started by removing the battery (after removing the card).

Does anyone know if the Transcend card (or any other) will work with Magic Lantern?

I am having the same problem. Still trying to do research but it's not looking good. There's a bit about once you've loaded ML it' boot flag is unable to be removed from the eos's internal flash memory. The threads are very recent too, so the sitch is not looking promising.

I have a solution that you can wirelessly transfer files from your old SD cards to mobile phones/tablets -- use a RAVPower 5-in-1 wireless filehub. It works as a card reader, Wi-Fi hotspot, file server, media sharing device and a 3000mAh battery pack. Insert your SD card in the filehub, you will be able to transfer or share the files on it. My friends and I once used it to stream video on five devices at the same time, there was no problem. It's amazing. More than that, it saves life at some situation with it's battery pack.

I would like to see Toshiba's Flash Air card added into the mix. Toshiba previously released a Class 6 8GB Flash Air SD card, and has recently released a 16GB Class 10 card. I have one of the 8GB cards I have just started experimenting with. But would like to see the new 16GB class 10 card reviewed.

I also wish the card makers and camera makers would develop a standard interface, so all could be supported. For example the Rebel SL1 has onboard support in the Canon firmware for Eye-Fi, but not the others. My Flash Air card works fine in the SL1, but without the direct Canon firmware support.

Previously I could only find assorted Eye-Fi reviews, which were mostly concentrating on the point-and-shoot perspective, in other words: "OMG wi-fi! OMG instant facebook!" To see the cards working on the 5D3 is rather reassuring.

Otherwise, for a next review, you might consider adding:- Impact on the battery life.- How fast the actual SD card is? How fast can camera write to it?- Compatibility with the cameras aka impact of camera's sleep on the Wi-Fi transfers. IIRC, not all cameras a compatible with Eye-Fi.

P.S. You might have added few more clicks/views to the article by starting it with something like "let me tell you the reason why there are no full-metal body cameras anymore." ;)

Good for Eye-Fi... BUT the Transcend has been hacked, so it is possible (easy) to get access to it as a little Linux system with all the programmability that implies: http://haxit.blogspot.ch/2013/08/hacking-transcend-wifi-sd-cards.html

I haven't tested the Transcend yet, but I'm looking forward to running my own scripts in it. ;-) Incidentally, I've been using an Eye-Fi card for a couple of years to do live continuous downloads of a camera at a research exhibit, and it is good even talking to Linux (not officially supported), but has serious trouble dealing with heavily-loaded wi-fi situations (i.e., a computing conference exhibit floor).

IMHO: The #1 missing feature(s) of the Eye-Fi cards is the inability to upload directly to a NAS device (bypassing the need for a laptop/desktop) and indirectly using a laptop and network file shares as targets. Switching from Access point mode to wireless AdHock and back is also rather painful. The card will (if your shooting slow enough or have long enough delay between the last shot(s) and attempts to open files on your laptop/desktop) however save you the step of cabling your camera to your laptop/desktop after shooting to transfer the files.I have yet to test its ability to transfer different file types to two different devices at the same time. (display .jpg on Android device, .raw on WIN7)

It should be noted that it appears that both the Transend and the Eye-Fi's less expensive models use cheaper/slower "N" compatible "G" speed radios which explains why the X2-Pro's speeds were consistently 2x faster.

I wonder why they did not test+try out the other contenders in this space?

With the Trancend card you can upload NEF files to Google drive on your iPad. The files are then kept till you reconnect to the net and then the NEF files will be uploaded to Google drive. If only the iPad had more WIFi connections. Just saying.I will test the possibility to upload to my computer direct. That is with the NEF files.

In an effort to make the eye fi card the best in this article the writer sums all the plus points. Added together it looks it is better than a special wifi transmitter that costs hundreds of dollars (ponds, euros, yen) Sending 3 pictures to different devices, will take so much time you can't view one, because the apparatus will constantly be busy transferring pictures. I wonder how long it takes to send one RAW picture from a Mark III to a laptop with the eye if card. In my Nikon I have a Trancend 16 Gb card in slot 2 and I use it with my iPad (4gen) to see my pictures in basic quality. It works great. In the first slot is my 64 GB card, where I save my RAW, or should I say NEF files.

I think both the cards, eye fi and the Trancend are not for pro shooting, but can add an extra dimension when sharing pictures.

I could never get the Transcend to connect reliably to my iPhone and the Eye-Fi card causes lockups in my 5D Mark III. I’ve read the “manuals” for both and the online FAQs and had nothing but problems.

The final nail in the coffin for Eye-Fi was when it got corrupted (luckily with no pictures on it). I put it into Lumix GX1 and a message flashed that the card was not compatible with the camera. Reformat the card and it still wouldn’t work in the camera. At least with the Transcend card I have a fast, reliable SD card.

Perhaps you could write more on how you got them to work reliably with your cameras and devices? Thanks.

Anything yet that will transfer directly to a computer or server via internet, without going through a third party server? I talked to Eye-Fi a couple weeks ago and they admitted they still couldn't do it. Had to go through their servers.

Mobi and Pro X2 (maybe some others) will connect direct without going through the servers if you set them up that way (but it's a fiddle and not very stable . . . IMHO) earlier cards have to connect through the servers . . . . but none of them worked for me with RAW files, reduced size/quality JPG files work OK but not if you are shooting fast . . . I would rate the transfer speeds as pedestrian at best

I shoot in RAW on a Nikon which is designated as NEF and the Eye-Fi stopped transmitting my images. When I called customer support I had to explain what NEF was and I was told that NEF isn't a true RAW!!! I'm sure Nikon would be interested in hearing THAT! They also told me to shoot in JPEG and I won't have the problem. Ya think? Not acceptable as a solution!

BIGGEST flaw .. this card is not meant for shooting in burst mode which I do a lot for action shoots and birding. I lost so many shots while the card was checking for a wifi connection before saving the next image!!! Again customer support offered a lame solution .. don't shoot in burst mode.

All in all, it's a good card for casual shooting and shoots that need immediate transfers for editing on the spot but I took it out of my DSLR and now use it in my POS only.

When using the Trancend card, you can browse the jpeg files and leave the RAW files. When in the view mode, only the jpeg files will be uploaded for viewing.I can upload the raw (NEF) files to google drive. These files are kept inside my iPad till I reconnect to the internet. Then they are uploaded to the cloud.

>I would recommend direct connect (card straight to device) rather than an ad-hoc<

I'm not clear what direct connect and ad-hoc mean. Where there is no wifi network available (many outside locations), how do you effectively transfer photos from the card to either an iPhone, iPad, other phone or tablet, or laptop wirelessly?

The card itself creates its own wireless network using the battery life from the camera. On a mobile device or computer, all you have to do is find that network and connect to it.

The ad-hoc means that the card connects to a wireless internet connection that is shared with the mobile device or computer and files are transferred over that network. Therefore, if you have a slow router or slow internet connection, it will take longer.

That's why I recommend direct connect over the network that the Eye-Fi card puts out.

Got both cards and I am using the EyeFi in combination with Shuttersnitch. This is because I don't want to wait 50 seconds before my iPad connects to the card but in less than 5 seconds. The penalty is that I have to stay on IOS 4.31 (JB) but then I use the iPad only for this so no need for newer stuff from Apple.

This article is so badly written that I could not stand reading it. Mike Perlman really, really needs to take a good writing class or two. Here is what I mean: Under the "Key Features" bullet list, he wrote for the Transcend, "Wirelessly transfer photos and video to a smartphone, tablet, or computer". There is no corresponding statement for the Eye-Fi. Very poor. Just a little further below, he wrote, "while both cards possess the ability to ... upload to iOS and Android devices, the Eye-Fi can do the same on a Wi-Fi enabled laptop or desktop computer. The Transcend card does not have this capability, and can only connect to a laptop or computer through a clunky and time-consuming Internet browser." Huh? The Transcend can connect using a browser, but does not have the ability to connect? Does the phrase "only connect" mean connect vs. something else, or does it mean "connect only to", and if the latter, is there a missing, very important comma before the word "through"?

So you're saying my writing was bad due to something that you saw as a contradiction? I stated that the only way the Transcend could connect to a computer was through a wireless internet connection—there's no direct connect function.

I have the EyeFi, the connection is started by first taking a picture and then you have to wait for your device to then see that there is a WiFi Network and then when you take a little time to recompose the connection drops and you start all over again...

Well, there must be something wrong with either your WiFi or the card you have; perhaps a firmware issue?

I have had no such problems (I am using two X2 Pro versions of the card).

What I have noticed though is that because the Eye-Fi card goes into Standby/Sleep mode if there has not been much activity, waking the card out that mode requires that you take a few shots or scroll through a few images in order to get transmission activity.

Once the card starts to transmit it will hold the WiFi connectionl for quite some time (for as long as you have configured it to in the desktop based setup utility).

I find the connection quite robust.

I suggest you go over to the Eye-Fi site's excellent support forum where you may get good advice on setting up your system to get a nicer user experience.

I agree. I upload all my out takes to my Eye-Fi account and Eye-Fi sends all my photos to my out take gallery at SmugMug. All my photos are brought to a safe place completely automatic. I love Eye-Fi - especially when I travel. Everything is PRO.

Click on vendor, click on specific camera, and the page would show particulars about compatibility of the card and the camera. There is an E-M5 compatibility note that basically says that E-M5 recognizes the Eye-Fi and knows what to do. IIRC earlier PENs had minor problems, but later Oly cams do support and recognize Eye-Fi fully.

I see some people have run into problems setting up the Eye-Fi pro x2 - it is easier now than it was a year ago - but for 90% of people they would be better off buying the Eye-Fi Mobi...

1) It is cheaper2) It has zero configuration

Its drawback is that it only works with smartphone and tablet devices rather than PC/MAC computers. However computers are basically for 'RAW' - wifi cards are too slow for RAW - and you are better of using your SD slot.

I really don't get this whining by many people about the raw workflow being too slow.

How is that??

First it depends on the cam you are using. If you have say a 16Mpix cam, and are shooting raw only in a studio, I have found that by the time you have done about 5 to 10 or so shots and they have uploaded to your laptop, your clients are unlikely to have had time to assess the merits of ALL of those shots before the next batch of files are transferred to your laptop.

So just make sure you have a few shots head start before allowing others too look at the screen; that way you will be keeping pace with the onlookers.

If, prior to this Eye-Fi device coming to market, your workflow consisted of shooting and then waiting until you got back to base before downloading the raws, then I really can't see how this Eye-Fi workflow, which is doing the downloads whilst you are on location, can be deemed slow.

Now, once you start talking about Nikon D800 size raws, then maybe you will have issues.

I use a regular Eye-Fi (Pro) in my main camera Pentax K-01, and a cheap Sandisk 4Gb Eye-Fi in a Pentax K10D and Samsung WB2000. I think none of these cameras are on the official supported list, but all work nonetheless. Just delay the auto-shutdown and file away the on/off switch so you're card has enough time to upload.

A neat trick using these cards is to add an automatically created G+ photo album to a G+ event. All pics that are added that day to that album will be visible to all participant invites in realtime. You don't even need to refresh, new pictures appear on top of the event.

It would be nice if such use cases and tricks could be added to dpreview articles like this one..

I would still like a CF Eye-Fi card :-). The fact that this is still not available, indicates that this is technically not possible - however, I do not understand why. Furthermore, I do not understand why nobody has developed an SD-CF adaptor that will facilitate Eye-Fi SD card usage, so you do not have to butcher the adaptor to not block the WiFi signal - even an adaptor that will somehow boost WiFi transmission. The WiFi solution offered by Nikon is just too expensive.